The renowned Southern Californian Genealogy Society runs the popular Jamboree in Burbank, CA, this weekend - one of the largest regional genealogy conferences in the US. We've set up our booth at the side entrance to the main hall. If you are in the area today or tomorrow, make sure you drop by at the Burbank Airport Marriott Hotel and Convention Center, visit us at stand #138. It was very busy yesterday and today will be busier. In addition to the packed exhibit hall featuring booths for all major genealogy industry companies, there are great talks to listen to in the 11 lecture halls.

MyHeritage's Daniel Horowitz will be speaking today at 11:30am about "face recognition technology" and at 3:30pm about "Family Tree Builder" and our Schelly Talalay Dardashti will be on the panel during the "blogger summit" at 11:30am and then talk about the "Iberian Ashkenaz DNA project" at 2:00pm.

Spoken English is littered with proverbs, sayings, and phrases. When someone flies off the handle because it’s raining cats and dogs, then gets the cold shoulder from his trouble and strife - even though she said she’d make no bones about it…we like to think we understand what’s going on.

And we do, for the most part. Our sayings are so familiar to us that we don’t stop to question them. But while many sayings make sense, there are others whose origins are a little harder to figure out. We’ve taken a look at a few of these, and tried to find some explanations for why they are what they are.Continue reading "Say What? The Origins of English Phrases" »

Search engines aren’t the most talked-about of online genealogy tools, but are in many ways one of the most important. They're frequently used to check facts, or to find more information on a person or place. They’re also the gateway to many of the other resources out there. If you have a records site you use, or a particular blog you visit, there’s a fair chance you got there first by a search engine.

One thing that's interesting about the search engine market is how under-utilized the majority of it is. Google currently hosts around two-thirds of internet search, with Yahoo and Bing – which people use for similar reasons – taking up an additional 28%. Among genealogists, who are often conservative in their browsing habits, this trend may be even more stark. It's like an ice cream parlor where no one's ordering anything except vanilla.Continue reading "Search Engines for Genealogy: Going Beyond Google" »